


the center

by tootsonnewts



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, flowery emotional bullshit honestly, his team loves shiro, instrospective shiro, pidge is honestly everything, shiro is tired (tm), shiro loves his team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 15:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12061950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tootsonnewts/pseuds/tootsonnewts
Summary: He wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He kind of wants to hide. He wants to break through the soft shell of skin circling his being and spill his secrets and fears and truths into the world in some misplaced attempt at catharsis. He really wishes there were therapists in space. He could probably stand to see one.or, shiro is ready to move on.





	the center

**Author's Note:**

> hello again!
> 
> this is so lame of me, but this was inspired a bit by 'the second coming' by yeats.  
> namely, i wanted to explore shiro's reaction to going through everything he has and trying to come out of the other side with some semblance of himself intact. like all pretentious adaptations, i took kind of a cavalier interpretation of the poem.
> 
> i also thought it would be interesting to address the way he feels about his team as individuals, so there's a little bit of character study tied up in this as well. i also get a little meta on myself, because why the hell not, i guess.
> 
> anyway, here's wonderwall.

There’s a heavy weight of selfishness laced throughout heroism. A burning desire to prove oneself to the world that sleeps right alongside the heady need to save it. There’s an equally heavy weight of forced selflessness in there, too. A requirement set down by the laws of nature that no champion should ever truly be given over to themselves. Their skills too precious, their time too short, there is no room in the heart of a hero for anything but the lands they are destined to protect and the trials they must face. This is a fact that Shiro knows intimately, intensely, painfully. This is a fact he finds harder and harder to accept with every passing day.

He always hated fairytales growing up. He found them uninspiring, impractical, out of reach (he much preferred adventure stories, a hero on a journey, an Ultimate Good to save the day). The older he got and the more he climbed, the more he lost and the more he suffered, he found himself wishing for maybe just a little piece of one. Something small that he could tuck under his armor and carry with him, an ember tucked against his chest that could burn a flame in his heart. Then again, he was trained in a way to make that flame feel like a weakness – prepared to torch him from the inside out were it given a proper chance.

Shiro gazes across the control room and takes in the sight of Keith reclined sideways on his seat, focusing on the dust motes swirling in the air, humming and lazily dragging his hand through them. Each individual speck seems to dance on the ends of his fingers, each a spell cast by strong, beautiful, practiced hands. Songs woven into the atmosphere by a warrior sworn to protect and claim. There’s a place he’s already conquered, but he doesn’t need to know yet.

Thick fingers wave in front of his face, pulling him out of his daze. He follows the hand up to the arm up to the concerned face of Hunk softly smiling at him, eyes betraying concern (ever-observant and endlessly kind, Shiro often considers that the world at large just does not deserve him). 

“You alright over there, buddy?”

Shiro shakes his head to clear the rest of his thoughts away and musters up his most convincing smile, “Yeah, of course. Just kinda drifted there for a tick.”

When he returns his sight to the chair, Keith is gone.

Shiro sighs inwardly and returns his attention to the monitors he’s been positioned in front of for the past three hours.

“We won’t be finding anything for a while,” Allura whispers from his side, “You should go rest.”

She’s right, he really should, but he knows he won’t. Either way, there’s nothing more to be done here, so he nods his thanks and leaves the bridge.

As he works his way down the corridor, he trails his fingers along the side, feeling the natural chill of the metal working its way up his human arm. He remembers doing something like this as a child, walking through the halls of his school, innocently grazing the texture of cinderblock walls. The gesture settles something in his mind; almost nostalgia, but not quite.

His stomach grumbles, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten in nearly two days due to the battle they just wrapped up, so he heads for the kitchen to get some goo. Pidge is seated at the counter, fiddling with something on her tablet.

Shiro still feels a pang at the back of his chest whenever he’s alone with her. She reminds him so much of Matt, and yet, she’s nothing like him at all. He wonders if she knows. He wonders if she blames him. He wonders so much these days that it’s a shock to him that there’s room for anything else in his mind.

Not even glancing up from her work, Pidge sighs out, “You don’t have to do that every time we’re in a room together, you know. The whole anguish thing must be tiring.”

So much like Matt. Shiro releases a soft huff and she looks up at him.

“I don’t. Blame you, I mean. I know you still think I do. I don’t.”

Shiro sighs and grabs a bowl, taking a seat next to her. He doesn’t know how to crack open his skull and pour the scrambled words out into the air between them. He knows he needs to, and he knows it will hurt, but it needs to be done. Someday, he thinks, he’ll be able to do it.

“We don’t get much time alone, huh?” he asks.

Close enough.

She quirks an eyebrow.

“Well, I dunno about you, boss, but when we’re a little busy running around the galaxy trying not to die, I tend not to focus on hangouts.”

Shiro laughs.

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” he tries. “I don’t know how to say it the best way, and I don’t even know what I _want_ to say, but-“

“Shiro, please,” she doesn’t look upset as she reaches for his hand. Resigned, maybe. Tired, definitely. “I’m not lying. I don’t blame you. We’re going to find my family.”

Pidge always has an admirable air of quiet confidence around her. A way of projecting her surety into the world. It’s well beyond her years and Shiro is supremely fond of it.

“I know,” he says. Because he does. He has unshakable faith in the fact that if Pidge says they’ll find them, then they’ll find them. He’ll only give up when she does. Even then, he may not.

A few quiet minutes slip between them as he absentmindedly chews his sustenance (Is it really food? He’s kind of always wondered about that.).

“You should go find yours, too.”

His mouth stutters in its motion, and he slips his gaze sideways to see her watching him, considering.

“He doesn’t sleep much these days. He worries about you. He won’t say it, but I know.”

She’s also just like her father. Able to see to the root of things with no pretense and no judgement. Just a simple statement of fact. She reaches out and takes the bowl.

“He’s upstairs, I think.”

Shiro nods and stands to leave the room. Before he walks through the door, Pidge clears her throat to speak up again.

“And Shiro?”

He glances over his shoulder. A soft smile plays at her mouth.

“You deserve to find it.”

He wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He kind of wants to hide. He wants to break through the soft shell of skin circling his being and spill his secrets and fears and truths into the world in some misplaced attempt at catharsis. He really wishes there were therapists in space. He could probably stand to see one.

Instead, he smiles back at her and whispers, “Thank you, Pidge.”

“Love ya, boss”

Somehow, today seems to be the day for conveniently placed heartfelt interactions, because the moment he leaves the kitchen, Shiro bumps right into an unusually subdued Lance.

“Heya, Shiro.”

“Lance.”

“You seem like a man on a mission.”

It’s interesting, he thinks, how Lance has the occasional ability to cut to the quick of a matter in no time at all. He’s very much like Keith in that way. No time for messing around when he thinks something is important. The recent turmoil they’ve found themselves in has sharpened him, honed his innate senses a bit. It makes Shiro proud. These are more things Shiro is unsure of voicing.

“In a sense,” is what he goes with.

Lance furrows his brows.

“He waited for you by your healing pod. It was honestly gross. You guys should get a room.”

The sudden statement rattles a snort out of Shiro, “That’s…a thought.”

“Another thought,” Lance continues, holding a finger up in his face with a smirk, “would be to quit sulking around, man. We all want things. Just like, go get it.”

Shiro feels the surprise spreading across his face.

“But hey, can you maybe just not make out in the common room or whatever? The rest of us have to spend time in there, too.”

Lance shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans and strolls off whistling. If Shiro were holding something, he briefly thinks that he’d launch it down the hall at his back. Instead, he heads for the stairs.

He finds Keith standing at the window of the training deck, staring out into the inky darkness of the space that looms and presses in on them. His fingers are pressed to the glass, tracing constellations or trajectories or flight paths (it’s always a little difficult to tell) – aimless wandering to occupy his hands.

Shiro takes heavy steps into the room, and Keith turns his head at the sound, glancing over his shoulder. Violet eyes meet brown and soften nearly imperceptibly.

“Takashi,” he greets, the ghost of a grin on his lips.

Shiro’s world stumbles to a stop, all focus pinpointed down to a single time, a single place, a single person. He clenches his fists, releases them, breathes in deep, releases it, steps forward. He has things he needs to say, questions he needs to ask, and miracles he desperately hopes to receive. He has a flame to stoke in his rib cage. He has issues that he’ll certainly need to work through, but he knows now that he just can’t do it alone. He doesn’t want to do it alone. He wants to allow himself to be selfish for once.

But it’s _hard_ to find the words, to press them through his teeth and allow them to escape into such an uncertain world. It’s so _unfair_ that they should be put on such a pedestal, left to be admired and rot in all their self-contained glory.  They all get left to confront the storms that rage around them, gods amongst mere mortals. The dark clouds of looming terror, the pelting rains of uncertainty that apparently only they can shield the masses from. Churning waters around them that keep them from truly reaching shore. An unfair divide that their mission has created between them and the objects of their own desires. These are things he’s been trained to live with. These are things he no longer can.

So he finds the words. He calms the storms. He battles the waves. He reaches out.

He says, “I love you.”

Keith smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> so there ya go.
> 
> like i always remind, you are more than welcome to come visit me on [tumblr](http://tootsonnewts.tumblr.com/) or over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/these_mortals).
> 
> have a great day, y'all.


End file.
